Shifting Attitudes Toward War

I don’t share Duncan Black’s political pessimism about this: “We’ll never get there, but I’ll know that actual serious people are in charge when we seriously question just whether the proper response to a bunch of guys flying planes into buildings was a large invasion and decade-long occupation of a country none of them were actually from.”
I think it’s quite noteworthy that if you compare the Vietnam War to Iraq and Afghanistan combined that we’ve had strikingly fewer American soldiers killed and strikingly fewer foreigners killed by American soldiers. George W Bush was way to the left of Lyndon Johnson in terms of tolerable levels of devastation to hail down on other people. The events of 9/11 led to a surge in nationalist and pro-violence sentiment, but the trajectory here over decades is downward. I don’t think that’s a trend that will inevitably continue, but there’s no particular reason to think it won’t, and people should be encouraged to see this as an area in which enormous progress has been made and where more work will be rewarded with more progress.

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NEW YORK — A dubious threat to U.S. interests. A swift vote in Congress for broad presidential war powers in response. A long, costly and bitterly debated war.
Fifty years ago Sunday, reacting to reports of a U.S. Navy encounter with enemy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam — reports long since discredited — President Lyndon Johnson signed a resolution passed overwhelmingly by Congress that historians call the crucial catalyst for deep American involvement in the Vietnam War. Many also see it as a cautionary tale that has gone unheeded.

By Saeed Naqvi
It would be almost spiteful to walk upto the US ambassador and say: "Congratulations, you have Donald Trump as president." Which way would he look? Secretary of State John Kerry has already said it. He is profoundly embarrassed when foreign statesmen confront him with: "What is happening in your country?"
Should he become president in November, Trump will have George W. Bush to thank.

The ludicrous headline of the month goes to Financial Times writer Richard McGregor who claims Barack Obama marshals his forces for war of non-intervention in Syria.
All official US statements, be they on the record or in behind-the-scenes briefings, are peppered with words such as “limited”, “surgical”, and “intermediate”, to emphasise how any action will be quarantined to a few days.

APWhen Americans think of being at war, they might think of images of their fellow citizens suffering.
We count the dead and wounded. We follow veterans on their difficult journey of recovery from physical injuries and post-traumatic stress. We watch families grieve and mourn their dead.
But it was not always this way.

Teri Poulton wanted to be an astronaut growing up. As a pilot in the US military, the Air Force Academy graduate, retired Lieutenant Colonel, and current head of BP’s national veterans outreach efforts ended up routinely doing something that doesn’t rank too far below space travel as far as risky and complex aviation feats go.

On Tuesday, President Obama awarded 24 soldiers with the Medal of Honor who had been overlooked, or rather, discriminated against, for heroic actions they took in wars going back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II.